THE MAROONS OF JAMAICA 1. Dallas, R. C. "The History of the Maroons, from their origin to the establishment of their chief tribe at Sierra Leone: including the expedition to Cuba, for the purpose of procuring Spanish chasseurs; and the state of the Island of Jamaica for the last ten years, with a succinct history of the island previous to that period." In two volumes. London, 1803. (8vo.) 2. Edwards, Bryan. "The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies. To which is added a general description of the Bahama Islands, by Daniel M'Kinnen, Esq." In four...
Nonfictions - Post by : eggibiz - Date : May 2012 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 1445

During the year 1831, up to the 23d of August, the Virginia newspapers seem to have been absorbed in the momentous problems which then occupied the minds of intelligent American citizens: What Gen. Jackson should do with the scolds, and what with the disreputables? should South Carolina be allowed to nullify? and would the wives of cabinet ministers call on Mrs. Eaton? It is an unfailing opiate to turn over the drowsy files of the Richmond _Enquirer_, until the moment when those dry and dusty pages are suddenly kindled into flame by the torch of Nat Turner. Then the terror flared...
Nonfictions - Post by : eggibiz - Date : May 2012 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2096

On Saturday afternoon, May 25, 1822, a slave named Devany, belonging to Col. Prioleau of Charleston, S.C., was sent to market by his mistress,--the colonel being absent in the country. After doing his errands, he strolled down upon the wharves in the enjoyment of that magnificent wealth of leisure which usually characterized the former "house-servant" of the South, when beyond hail of the street-door. He presently noticed a small vessel lying in the stream, with a peculiar flag flying; and while looking at it, he was accosted by a slave named William, belonging to Mr. John Paul, who remarked to him,...
Nonfictions - Post by : eggibiz - Date : May 2012 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 1541

In exploring among dusty files of newspapers for the true records of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, I have caught occasional glimpses of a plot perhaps more wide in its outlines than that of either, which has lain obscure in the darkness of half a century, traceable only in the political events which dated from it, and the utter incorrectness of the scanty traditions which assumed to preserve it. And though researches in public libraries have only proved to me how rapidly the materials for American history are vanishing,--since not one of our great institutions possessed, a few years since, a...
Nonfictions - Post by : eggibiz - Date : May 2012 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 1680

The Greek sage Socrates, when he was but a boy minding his father's goats, used to lie on the grass under the myrtle trees; and, while the goats grazed around him, he loved to read over and over the story which Solon, the law-giver and poet, wrote down for the great-grandfather of Socrates, and which Solon had always meant to make into a poem, though he died without doing it. But this was briefly what he wrote in prose:-- "I, Solon, was never in my life so surprised as when I went to Egypt for instruction in my youth, and there,...
Short Stories - Post by : mcarrier69 - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 1958

In times past there were enchanted islands in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Wales, and even now the fishermen sometimes think they see them. On one of these there lived a man named Tegid Voel and his wife called Cardiwen. They had a son, the ugliest boy in the world, and Cardiwen formed a plan to make him more attractive by teaching him all possible wisdom. She was a great magician and resolved to boil a large caldron full of knowledge for her son, so that he might know all things and be able to predict all that was...
Short Stories - Post by : AllyCat - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 1350

King Lir of Erin had four young children who were cared for tenderly at first by their stepmother, the new queen; but there came a time when she grew jealous of the love their father bore them, and resolved that she would endure it no longer. Sometimes there was murder in her heart, but she could not bear the thought of that wickedness, and she resolved at last to choose another way to rid herself of them. One day she took them to drive in her chariot:--Finola, who was eight years old, with her three younger brothers,--Aodh, Fiacre, and little Conn,...
Short Stories - Post by : dwierman - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2727

The old Celtic hero and poet Usheen or Oisin, whose supposed songs are known in English as those of Ossian, lived to a great old age, surviving all others of the race of the Feni, to which he belonged; and he was asked in his last years what had given him such length of life. This is the tale he told:-- After the fatal battle of Gavra, in which most of the Feni were killed, Usheen and his father, the king, and some of the survivors of the battle were hunting the deer with their dogs, when they met a maiden...
Short Stories - Post by : nparekh - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 3391

The mighty king Bran, a being of gigantic size, sat one day on the cliffs of his island in the Atlantic Ocean, near to Hades and the Gates of Night, when he saw ships sailing towards him and sent men to ask what they were. They were a fleet sent by Matholweh, the king of Ireland, who had sent to ask for Branwen, Bran's sister, as his wife. Without moving from his rock Bran bid the monarch land, and sent Branwen back with him as queen. But there came a time when Branwen was ill-treated at the palace; they sent her...
Short Stories - Post by : Arcana_Media - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 1875

Perfect is my chair in Caer Sidi; Plague and age hurt not who's in it-- They know, Manawydan and Pryderi. Three organs round a fire sing before it, And about its points are ocean's streams And the abundant well above it-- Sweeter than white wine the drink in it.Peredur, the knight, rode through the wild woods of the Enchanted Island until he arrived on clear ground outside the forest. Then he beheld a castle on level ground in the middle of a meadow; and round the castle flowed a stream, and inside the castle there...
Short Stories - Post by : Gazoo - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2230

In one of the old books called Welsh Triads, in which all things are classed by threes, there is a description of three men called "The Three Generous Heroes of the Isle of Britain." One of these--named Nud or Nodens, and later called Merlin--was first brought from the sea, it is stated, with a herd of cattle consisting of 21,000 milch cows, which are supposed to mean those waves of the sea that the poets often describe as White Horses. He grew up to be a king and warrior, a magician and prophet, and on the whole the most important figure...
Short Stories - Post by : imported_n/a - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 1261

Sir Lancelot, the famous knight, was the son of a king and queen against whom their subjects rebelled; the king was killed, the queen taken captive, when a fairy rose in a cloud of mist and carried away the infant Lancelot from where he had been left beneath a tree. The queen, after weeping on the body of her husband, looked round and saw a lady standing by the water-side, holding the queen's child in her arms. "Fair, sweet friend," said the queen, "give me back my child." The fairy made no reply, but dived into the water; and the queen...
Short Stories - Post by : lsg39 - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2214

King Arthur in his youth was fond of all manly exercises, especially of wrestling, an art in which he found few equals. The old men who had been the champions of earlier days, and who still sat, in summer evenings, watching the youths who tried their skill before them, at last told him that he had no rival in Cornwall, and that his only remaining competitor elsewhere was one who had tired out all others. "Where is he?" said Arthur. "He dwells," an old man said, "on an island whither you will have to go and find him. He is of...
Short Stories - Post by : BizPro - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 1584

In the ruined castle at Winchester, England, built by William the Conqueror, there is a hall called "The Great Hall," where Richard Coeur de Lion was received by his nobles when rescued from captivity; where Henry III. was born; where all the Edwards held court; where Henry VIII. entertained the emperor Charles V.; where Queen Mary was married to Philip II.; where Parliament met for many years. It is now a public hall for the county; and at one end of it the visitor sees against the wall a vast wooden tablet on which the names of King Arthur's knights of...
Short Stories - Post by : tony1219 - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2701

An Irish knight named Maelduin set forth early in the eighth century to seek round the seas for his father's murderers. By the advice of a wizard, he was to take with him seventeen companions, neither less nor more; but at the last moment his three foster brothers, whom he had not included, begged to go with him. He refused, and they cast themselves into the sea to swim after his vessel. Maelduin had pity on them and took them in, but his disregard of the wizard's advice brought punishment; and it was only after long wanderings, after visiting multitudes of...
Short Stories - Post by : Empire - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2513

The young student Brandan was awakened in the morning by the crowing of the cock in the great Irish abbey where he dwelt; he rose, washed his face and hands and dressed himself, then passed into the chapel he prayed and sang until the dawn of the day. "With song comes courage" was the motto of the abbey. It was one of those institutions like great colonies,--church, library, farm, workshop, college, all in one,--of which Ireland in the sixth century was full, and which existed also elsewhere. Their extent is best seen by the modern traveller in the remains of...
Short Stories - Post by : fsolm1 - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2590

The boy Kirwan lay on one of the steep cliffs of the Island of Innismane-- one of the islands of Arran, formerly called Isles of the Saints. He was looking across the Atlantic for a glimpse of Hy-Brasail. This was what they called it; it was a mysterious island which Kirwan's grandfather had seen, or thought he had seen--and Kirwan's father also;--indeed, there was not one of the old people on the island who did not think he had seen it, and the older they were, the oftener it had been seen by them, and the larger it looked. But Kirwan...
Short Stories - Post by : 61624 - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2496

The prosperous farmer Conall Ua Corra in the province of Connaught had everything to make him happy except that he and his wife had no children to cheer their old age and inherit their estate. Conall had prayed for children, and one day said in his impatience that he would rather have them sent by Satan than not have them at all. A year or two later his wife had three sons at a birth, and when these sons came to maturity, they were so ridiculed by other young men, as being the sons of Satan, that they said, "If such...
Short Stories - Post by : mrlee - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2836

The young Spanish page, Luis de Vega, had been for some months at the court of Don Rodrigo, king of Spain, when he heard the old knights lamenting, as they came out of the palace at Toledo, over the king's last and most daring whim. "He means," said one of them in a whisper, "to penetrate the secret cave of the Gothic kings, that cave on which each successive sovereign has put a padlock," "Till there are now twenty-seven of them," interrupted a still older knight. "And he means," said the first, frowning at the interruption, "to take thence the treasures...
Short Stories - Post by : BryanN10 - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 2251

Erik the Red, the most famous of all Vikings, had three sons, and once when they were children the king came to visit Erik and passed through the playground where the boys were playing. Leif and Biorn, the two oldest, were building little houses and barns and were making believe that they were full of cattle and sheep, while Harald, who was only four years old, was sailing chips of wood in a pool. The king asked Harald what they were, and he said, "Ships of war." King Olaf laughed and said, "The time may come when you will command ships,...
Short Stories - Post by : spike2003 - Date : May 2011 - Author :Thomas Wentworth Higginson - Read : 3145